Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, for setting out the Government's case for this torrent of Home Office, DCA and constitutional reform Bills. Like the noble and learned Lord, I look forward to the maiden speeches of three Members of this House.
	Yet again, the Government are suffering from legislative incontinence. We could be forgiven for believing that this was less the Queen's Speech and more the Home Secretary's speech. It makes one wonder whether he is setting out his stall ready to contest the leadership of the Labour Party. His energy in grabbing the headlines tries to mask the reality that the catalogue of Bills before us reflects the Government's own failures over the past nine years. Far from cracking down on crime, it has been a case of the systems that they have created cracking up.
	Session after Session, we have seen the same unwillingness to think through changes before forcing them through another place by guillotines and timetabling motions, with the Government then finding that they need to make more substantial changes in this House when the Bills are more thoroughly scrutinised.
	Let us recall that significant sections of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 and the Criminal Justice Act 2003 are still not in force or have been repealed, some of them even before being implemented. Headline policies such as intermittent custody have been brought in and recently abandoned, while custody plus is still nowhere to be seen. What a mess.
	I now turn to the torrent of work that awaits us during the next year. The noble and learned Lord referred to counter-terrorism legislation and the possibility that further legislation may be needed. He was somewhat cautious in the way that he presented the Government's views. The Leader in another place is less cautious. On his website, he lists, firmly, a counter terrorism Bill as part of government business for this Session. I was intrigued by the intervention last weekend of a briefing by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, whom I see in his place today. We await the results of the Government's discussion on these matters.
	There are pieces of legislation missing from this already overlong list. What has happened to the Bill that was expected to reform the coroner system? Is that waiting in the wings or has it been abandoned? Will the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, tell the House which Home Office Bills will start in this House?
	The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has outlined the Government's plans with regard to changes to the membership and procedures of this House. It is right that any changes are made by consensus and we welcome that element of the gracious Speech. We also welcome the measured report of the Joint Committee of both Houses, chaired so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham. Like the noble and learned Lord, we pay tribute to the noble Lord and to the officials and the members of that committee for their diligence.
	In the light of that report, will the Government confirm just one of the proposals? The noble and learned Lord tried to airbrush over that by saying that we must not talk about detail. He may question my use of the word "airbrush", but certainly in their use of the media the Government are expert at airbrushing. Will the Government confirm that they have dropped the proposal that a limit of 60 days should be placed on this House's right to scrutinise legislation? The noble and learned Lord nods; I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, will to put that on the record later. That would have been the first guillotine in this House and we would have resisted it.
	Noble Lords are aware that the right honourable Mr Straw is convening discussions about changes in composition. The noble and learned Lord's Back-Bench friends have made their views on Mr Straw known with startling clarity in the past couple of weeks, and I would guess that Mr Straw is certainly not the flavour of the month with them. Of course, we shall have to wait the outcome of those discussions. As the noble and learned Lord said, it is essential that we have a free vote on any principles put forward. I share the view of many that the House of Lords as it is now is working better than many people expected, and I make it clear that we on these Benches will not accept proposals that do not strengthen this House. I shall listen very carefully to the views expressed by noble Lords today. My noble friend Lord Kingsland may say more on this matter when he winds up the debate for the Opposition later tonight. He will also comment on the two DCA Bills.
	As for the Home Office Bills, we have so far seen the text of just three: the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill, which is a carryover, Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill and the Offender Management Bill.
	The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill has already proceeded a long way through another place. We have already made our position clear on it during those debates. A great deal of what is proposed is already covered by the 1974 health and safety legislation. However, we will continue to consider how we can work with the Government to improve the Bill if that is possible. When the Bill reaches this House, which I understand will be before Christmas, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral will lead on it for us.
	With the Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill, the Government are yet again seeking to persuade Parliament to abolish jury trial in certain fraud cases. We remain opposed to the Government's proposals. By ending the automatic right to jury trial in fraud cases, the Government, who have already eroded so many of our liberties, are embarking on what could be a very dangerous and slippery slope in which the right to trial by jury could be called into question in a much wider range of cases. My noble friend Lord Kingsland will lead for us on that Bill and will have more to say about it later. I shall lead for the Opposition on the remaining Home Office Bills—what joy lies ahead!
	The Offender Management Bill has already surfaced and died once at the hands of the Government. In its previous incarnation it started in this House before being abandoned. This time the Bill is starting in another place. Why is that?
	We made our position on the Government's proposals clear in 2005. I have had a quick look at the Bill this morning, and nothing much seems to have changed. Merging the Probation Service and the Prison Service is a mammoth task. Handled well, it could be a great move forward for the justice system, but so far the Government have handled it badly. They have created uncertainty. It is not clear whether there will be sufficient funding to ensure the proper operation of those services—a system that will, after all, have to manage the sentence plans of more than one-third of a million offenders. It also appears that the system which the Government have decided to adopt would undermine rather than improve the management of offenders.
	I recall that during the general election last year, doubt was cast on the Government's plans by the Home Office itself. Home Office documents appeared in the Observer, revealing that civil servants had reported that the likelihood of,
	"inadequate supervision of cases leading the unmanageable policy making",
	was "high".The report also repeatedly warned of a high likelihood that "loss of key skills" from frontline staff would result in,
	"inadequate supervision of dangerous offenders".
	We will need to listen very carefully and more widely to the views of the Prison Service and the Probation Service when we come to judge the validity of the Government's proposals.
	The Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, is today briefing Members of both Houses on this Bill. I hope that noble Lords will excuse my absence for an hour or so later this afternoon: I thought that it was only courteous that I should at least attend his first briefing.
	I turn to the border and immigration Bill; well, here we go again, my Lords—it is the fourth that I remember in a very short time. There has still been no consolidation, although that would have been sensible. We welcome measures to improve the deportation of non-EEA national prisoners. It is a shame that the Government have taken so long to take effective action and it is even more of a shame that they voted against my amendment on the selfsame issue earlier this year.
	We will look carefully at the detail of the Organised Crime Bill. We expect to work very constructively with the Government to ensure that it effectively combats serious crime. It is curious that we need further legislation when the ink has scarcely dried on last year's Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. We are promised yet another Criminal Justice Bill just two weeks after the previous criminal justice Bill received Royal Assent in this Chamber.
	We welcome the commitment to tackle the imbalances in sentencing. However, those imbalances were mostly created by the Government in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. If the Government are committing themselves to keeping offenders in prison for longer, they must create adequate prison capacity. The current overcrowding in our prisons prevents the effective rehabilitation of offenders, and that cannot be right.
	Measures in the Bill to tackle anti-social behaviour will be welcome only if they really are more than just initiatives to grab headlines in the redtops. The public expect active enforcement of anti-social behaviour laws that are already in place and not yet more legislation.
	The noble and learned Lord rightly pointed out that Governments must protect their citizens. Every Government have, as a first duty, the protection of their citizens when they are, in certain circumstances, unable to protect themselves. The public are now very concerned about the current level of crime and insecurity. The public are not clamouring for the Government to pass yet more legislation to remove their individual liberty. They want something practical; they want to see more police on the beat and in their communities to prevent and to solve crimes. They want the police to have the time to respond swiftly to domestic burglaries, muggings and public disorder, as well as to the most serious offences—killings and rape. The public do not clamour to have the tyranny of the criminal replaced by a tyranny of government restrictions on their individual liberty.
	The noble and learned Lord was absolutely right to say that Governments have to make difficult decisions; that is the nature of government. The important thing is that in making difficult decisions, one makes the right decisions for the right reasons. When the Government bring forward measures in this Session, we will want to ensure that they achieve the security of our citizens without an improper assault on civil liberties. We must ensure that the raft of new legislation that is now before us is both proportionate and effective in securing the safety of us all.

Lord Ashcroft: My Lords, I declare an interest in the subject about which I have chosen to speak because for more than 20 years I have been personally, perhaps intimately, involved with it; namely, the funding of political parties.
	I am not a professional politician and perhaps that is why I find the whole debate about the funding of parties depressing. I cannot discern any enthusiasm for the rebuilding of political involvement and engagement in Britain. I observe no passion to encourage the young to take an interest in politics. Instead, there appears to be a wish merely to "tighten" the existing rule on donations and then burden the taxpayer.
	The funding of political parties is a big subject—big because it is important and big because it is built from a number of quite separate components. What I am about to say does not address each and every one of those components, but I will address a couple of the elements which I consider to be among the most important.
	Let me address the cap on donations and the legal definition of a permissible donor to political parties. We now have a structure for donations which is both pointless and counter-productive, and the debate in respect of which Sir Hayden Phillips is to be the catalyst must take place soon and it must be addressed robustly. If it is not, we will soon hear once again the nonsense which is the convenient refuge for those incapable of logical thought and common sense. We will hear once more the suggestion that "there is no alternative" and that "we should instead move to the state funding of politics". This must be resisted at all costs.
	My opposition to substantial state funding does not mean, however, that I take the view that political parties should forever be funded largely by a handful of donors, whether they be individuals or trade unions—I do not. Political parties should strive to broaden their donor base and a sign of failure is a dependence on a few big donors. Political parties must then bear the consequent but inevitable criticisms. It seems to me that those arguing in favour of state funding have been driven to this position by a combination of defeatism about the difficulties of funding a modern political party and dismay at the attitude of the media to anyone who has had the courage to make a major political donation.
	But the dead hand of the state is no answer; it is entirely unsuited to act as the paymaster of politics. State funding will ossify our parties. The need constantly to refresh support through the financial and membership base is the best possible stimulus to the vitality of any party. How else can one hope for efficiency in one's operations and accountability to one's supporters?
	Once the requirement to raise funds disappears, so will the need to nurture the membership base and to embrace new ideas and new people. That base will inevitably decline, perhaps terminally, leaving behind it a self-perpetuating oligarchy of career politicians, answerable only to themselves and the National Audit Office. Heaven help us all.
	We will, of course, have time to debate these points when any Bill to amend the current legislation reaches this House.
	I would like to consider some of the events that have elevated this subject towards the top of the political agenda. The current loans for peerages debacle is only the current portion of that history.
	It could be argued that an early plan of new Labour was that the Tories could be weakened financially. New rules were implemented which seemed intended to cut off donations to the Conservatives. The need was introduced for prior shareholder approval before public companies could donate; so-called "foreign" donations were banned; and disclosure became compulsory. All of this was coincidentally eroding the traditional core of giving to the Conservative Party. That is exactly what happened. Life became much more difficult for the Tory fundraisers.
	The weakness, however, for the Government in their scheme was that rules that hit the Tories also proved to be profoundly damaging to their party's fund-raising efforts. And so, faced with new, if largely self-imposed, difficulties, the Government now seem to be signalling that they will allow political parties to poke their little fingers further into the public purse. These bleatings must be resisted.
	The Conservatives themselves are not without blame. We should have had the courage to resist many of the barmy restrictions on political giving that were introduced following the Neill report. As a party, we were afraid to be seen as standing out against legislation which was presented to the public as part of the battle against sleaze. That was an error. Although the new legislation brought a welcome approach to transparency, it also introduced a ragbag of anomalies and contradictions which are patently absurd, yet which no politician felt able to challenge and which Sir Hayden Phillips does not address.
	As is well known, the main prerequisite for permissible giving to a political party is, in the case of an individual, that he or she is registered or entitled to register to vote in the UK and in the case of a company, that it is incorporated in the EU and does business in the UK—whatever that means, and I suspect I will be tested soon at taxpayers' expense. This means that Canadians who live in Britain are able to donate by virtue of their Commonwealth citizenship. US citizens, however, cannot. As EU citizens living in the UK, Swedes can but Norwegians cannot. Greeks can but Turks cannot. Slovenians can, but Croatians cannot. Even the Swiss, surrounded on all sides by the EU, cannot. A businessman from Mozambique, however, as a member of the Commonwealth if residing in Britain can, yet a Briton posted abroad for over 15 years by his UK employer, even if he intends to retire to the UK, cannot unless he is a diplomat for whom, not surprisingly, an exception is made.
	There are more anomalies. Citizens of Gibraltar, whatever their ethnic or cultural background, all get lumped, willy-nilly, into the UK's south-west region for the purposes of European elections. A special exemption for these people makes them permissible donors to UK political parties for the four months preceding a European election. But there are no restrictions on those parties as to the use of, or the timing of the use of, funds received from Gibraltarians, whoever they might be. Yet British citizens from the Channel Islands never have such a window of opportunity.
	Northern Ireland's political parties are exempted entirely, meaning that Sinn Fein, for example, is free to continue to receive moneys raised by NORAID in the United States without restriction.
	At the corporate level, a British public company has to have shareholder approval to be able to donate, but a company from elsewhere in the EU which—to use that euphemistic phrase—does business in the UK does not. And what about the 100 per cent foreign-owned but UK-incorporated holding company which has only foreign directors, none of whom has ever been to Britain, let alone speaks English and because it is a holding company is therefore deemed to be doing business in the UK? What about those guys? No problem—it is perfectly permissible.
	It is even possible to be British, tax resident and domiciled in the UK, yet unable to donate to a political party as under certain, but unusual, conditions, it is not possible to get on to the electoral register if someone lives in Britain for fewer than six months of the year. On the other hand, a Member of Parliament may have a consultancy with any foreign person, company or Government, yet their party cannot receive donations from the same source. Clearly they have confidence in their own judgment but doubt that of their party bosses. That is an interesting thought.
	A brief, tangential thought from the other end of the spectrum of political funding serves to reinforce, if needed, my argument on the illogicality of the current rules and to make the point that concern could just as easily be expressed among the minnows as the giants. Donations which in any one year fall below £200 are not governed by the rules on permissibility and need not be disclosed. Two hundred pounds may be a comparatively small donation but it is well above the membership subscription of our major parties. This means that highly unsuitable, inappropriate and generally not permissible "foreigners" can become members of any one of our parties, perfectly permissibly, and vote upon important matters such as, for instance, the election of a new leader of a political party. The current rules are clearly nonsense. There has to be a better way; I hope that there is.
	In our desire to draw a line between Brits and foreigners, in the misguided belief that foreign money is bad and UK money is good, we have devised a scheme which is patently absurd and achieves no logical purpose. We should dump restrictive regulations and replace them with requirements only of openness and transparency. We should instead allow political parties to accept financial support, cash benefits in kind and credit from whomever they chose and without a cap. We should require them only to make public the identity of the donor and full details of the donation. We should also, unlike the current reporting timetable, require prompt notification, especially of bigger donations, of within, say, seven days.
	Political parties would then have to make decisions based not on the legal definition of permissibility but on the common sense interpretation of what would be considered acceptable to those whom they expect to vote them into office as Members of Parliament currently have to do with regard to their sources of income. Columbian drugs barons, triads, porn kings and the mob would, I hope, be considered unacceptable donors or benefactors, but if party treasurers and Members of Parliament decided otherwise let us allow the media, their own supporters and the public to judge. They would be speedier, more effective and much more telling arbiters than the courts.
	In future, therefore, we should allow parties to take money from any quarter, the only requirement being that they should be entirely open about all support above a certain level. That would place the onus on parties to act reasonably and to exercise sound judgment. It would place an equal duty on the media to report donations responsibly; but in the end it would be down to Mr and Mrs Joe Public to judge. We should trust them—they usually get it right.